Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Vol. III. No. 30, February, 1922

They’re Going Fast!

Whiz Bang’s greatest book—The Winter Annual Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22—hot off the press. Orders are now being mailed. There will be no delay as long as the supply lasts. If your news stand’s quota is sold out—

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Or your check, money order or stamps
To the coupon on the back page.

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REMEMBER, FOLK

Last year our Annual (which was only one-fourth as large as the 1921-22 book) was sold out on the Pacific Coast within three or four days, and not a copy could be bought anywhere in the United States within ten days.

So hurry up! First Come will be First Served!

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Don’t write for early back copies of our regular issues.

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Captain Billy’s
Whiz Bang

America’s Magazine of
Wit, Humor and
Filosophy

FEBRUARY, 1922 Vol. III. No. 30

Published Monthly
W. H. Fawcett, Rural Route No. 2
at Robbinsdale, Minnesota

Entered as second-class matter May 1, 1920, at the postoffice at Robbinsdale, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879.

Price 25 cents $2.50 per year
ONE DOLLAR FOR THE WINTER ANNUAL

Contents of this magazine are copyrighted. Republication of any part permitted when properly credited to Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang.

“We have room for but one soul loyalty and that is loyalty to the American people.”—Theodore Roosevelt.

Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang employs no solicitors. Subscriptions may be received only at authorized news stands or by direct mail to Robbinsdale. We join in no clubbing offers, nor do we give premiums. Two-fifty a year in advance.

Edited by a Spanish and World War Veteran and dedicated to the fighting forces of the United States

Drippings From the Fawcett

Gentle readers, wet your lips, for whilst with dry tongues thou art yearning, your obedient servant, Bilious Billy, is in the land of liberty—personal and otherwise—basking in Cuba’s sunny clime, in Havana, sucking soda through a straw! Soda! Sure, soda with a dash in it. When we grow tired of fast horses and saintly senoritas, it will be back again to the big pines of northern Minnesota for the fishing season at Breezy Point Lodge. You know, folk, in the winter we Minnesotans can’t fish, as our Norwegian friends would say.

Well, boys and girls, here I am on the road again—just like a wandering Jew. In making my present departure from Robbinsdale, I didn’t know whether I was coming to Montreal or going to Cuba.

The high cost of coal in Robbinsdale made me long for summer at Miami Beach, where there is no charge for hot rolls in the sand and a little chicken nearby. Then again I was reminded of having seen Willie and Mollie playing in the sand, indulging in youthful folly. The sand was terribly hot on Willie’s back and the sun was hot tamale.

Woke up in Chicago with an ice-pack attached to my fevered brow, and appreciating that the United States is the land of personal liberty I hied forth towards Miami to see if I might not be able to obtain a “wee snifter.” Miami is now the legal home of William Jennings Bryan and I did not have much luck in satisfying an unquenchable thirst. Anyway, if I did, it wouldn’t be nice to tell about. Mr. Bryan may have something to do with keeping Miami and the State of Florida bone-dry—which it isn’t—so more power to him. Florida may be dry, but in the unmortal words of our snuff-chewing hired man, I am pleased to report that there are a lot of “damp rascals” here.

Understand the Floridians are seriously considering Bryan for United States Senator. Had the pleasure today of driving through the backyard of the Commoner’s palatial home, but all I could see was the rear door and his smokehouse. Mr. Bryan was too busy addressing a Baptist convention to even invite me to lunch. Tomorrow he is slated for a Bible talk in the city park and if I get up in time, and feel all right, shall listen to his discourse. (Later, didn’t get up in time.)

* * *

After leaving Chicago I stopped at Atlanta for a few days’ sojourn. Here we struck nice warm sunshine. The Atlanta ladies are a genial lot, but their costuming somewhat crashes with the constitutional scheme of affairs as laid down by the eighteenth amendment. Their hats are full of cocktails—and sometimes also their heads, I am told. In fact, a bird of paradise plume is quite in vogue in Atlanta.

The information is also vouchsafed that some Atlanta girls are born foolish, while others marry.

Overheard a rather humorous remark of a local celebrity, Clayt Robson by name, one evening in the lobby of the Kimball house. Robson is a well-known Georgian lobbyist and political boss, who is considered a power in the present state administration. Clayt jokingly spluttered to a group of friends that “I was twenty-one years old and grown-up before I knew that ‘damned Yankee’ was two words.”

My visit to Atlanta brought to memory a conversation I had with Cole S. Blease, former governor of South Carolina, about four years ago. The governor very kindly invited me to his suite in the Selwyn hotel at Charlotte, N. C., to partake of his private twenty-year-old stock. While “killing” the quart of medicine, the subject of Atlanta came to the front. Here is the Bleasian description of the South’s largest city, as nearly as I can remember:

“Atlanta is a hell-hole of perdition. It is no place for a virtuous woman or an honest man.”

I cannot quite agree with Mr. Blease, for Atlanta treated me royally. The girlies here I found to be of true Southern stock—very shy and rather demure. I once heard the late “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman remark that the only family tree he could boast was that the women were virtuous and the men reasonably brave. From my cursory observations this description fairly fits Atlanta.

From Atlanta our next stop was Jacksonville. Went for a joyride here, which ended in a thrilling though harmless smashup. Upon picking myself from out the wreckage, I thanked the kindly doctor for a safe delivery. Which calls to mind these lines by Lincoln, or some other noted personage:

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

As he rides in his swift-flying car like a cloud,

A break in the axle, a bust in the tire,

He passeth from life to the heavenly choir.

* * *

As a deer hunter, I’m a good farmer. Spent ten days tramping the windfalls in the neighborhood of Breezy Point Lodge without even seeing a deer. Saw plenty of polecats, bobcats and house cats, and nearly captured a “porky.” I learned lots about the habits and habitations of the northern pine animals and finally managed to knock down a “spike buck” (whatever that means) on the last day of the hunting season. Must admit the buck almost shook hands with me before I was able to knock him over. However, I had a very good guide, Arthur Foote by name, but better known as “Panther Pete.” Pete has earned a regular living for twenty-five years as a trapper and deer hunter, and I am sure that the small buck never would have fallen for me had he not enticed the animal to leave his forest retreat.

* * *

While touring the San Francisco underworld as the guest of the police vice squad on my recent tour of the Pacific coast, we encountered what the police considered a suspicious party.

He was one of those dapper young men with a red necktie that frequent this section of Famous Frisco.

“What’s your occupation?” asked one of the policemen of the young man.

“I’m a business man,” was the answer as the young man started to trip blithely away.

“Wait a minute,” said the cop. “I never saw a business man walk like that.”

“Oh,” replied the dapper youth, “but you don’t know what kind of business I’m in!”

Thirty days for him.

* * *

During my recent rampage about the American continent it was my pleasure to appreciate the service of Tiajuana, and I could not resist the temptation to contrast this Mexican village with the Canadian metropolis, Montreal. In Montreal I enjoyed a bottle of Pol Roger champagne without being a law breaker, even though it cost me ten cents for a two by four sandwich. From Montreal I hustled to the deer hunting regions of northern Minnesota and found no champagne or other imported wines, but plenty of “mountain dew.” With all due respect to Mr. Andrew J. Volstead, our Minnesota congressman, there is today in this grand and glorious land of the free and home of the brave more rotten booze than it was ever my lot to drink in the pre-prohibition days.

But to get back to my deer hunting expedition, I must admit that the deer were scarce but—

But there were polecats and goosehawks,

And a four-legged cow;

Wild pigs and wild boars,

And a thing like a sow.

There were thousands of screech owls,

Turkey buzzards and quail,

And a little black jack-ass

With a damnable tail,

With their fol de dol dol

And fol de dol day.

* * *

While flivvering out near Golden Valley, Minnesota, I dropped in at the farm of my old friend, John Foss, to pass the time of day. I noticed a drove of hogs on his timber lot acting peculiar. They would run up to a tree and squeal like mad, then leave that tree and go to another and do the same thing, continuing in their mad scamper around the timber lot.

“What makes them act that way?” I asked John.

“Well,” replied old man Foss, “last winter I had a throat infection and lost the power of speech for a month or more and couldn’t call them to their feed, so I taught them to come by rapping on a post or a tree, and now the darn woodpeckers are setting them crazy.”

* * *

At Breezy Point Lodge I have an old gray mare and I love to sing this melody of my boyhood days:

The old gray mare

She sits on the single tree,

Sits on the whipple tree,

Sits on the single tree.

And, believe me, her greatest indoor and outdoor sport is sitting on the single tree.

* * *

Up in the deer hunting grounds of northern Minnesota the jack-pine savages are still singing that old familiar ditty about the much maligned, bird—the woodpecker. These heart throbbing words peal gently through the evening air:

“I stuck my finger in a woodpecker’s hole,

And the woodpecker said: ‘Gosh darn your soul,’

‘Take it out; take it out; take it out; take it out.’”

* * *

The other day I was riding on a street car in Minneapolis. Sitting opposite me was a very pretty young lady who had a poodle dog in her lap. Bluenose lady sitting next to the girl addressed her thusly: “My, what a nasty little dog. Don’t you think, my young lady, it would look much nicer if you had a little baby in your lap?”

“No,” the pretty one replied in calm even tones, “it wouldn’t. You see I’m not married.”

* * *

Chief Bloberger surveyed a party of hoboes coming down the Great Northern tracks.

“Here they come, hog fat and crummy, short pipes and red noses. Won’t work, ain’t allowed to shoot ’em, and if you don’t feed ’em they’ll burn your barn daown.”

* * *